Race 3 - Day 3
Crew Diary - Cape Town, South Africa to Albany, Australia
03 November

Yippeeee! After three days of fruitless tacking and bobbing, the wind

picked up this afternoon, and we are finally making gains South and East.

There is still a long way to go yet, of course, but we feel like we're on our way. The boat is heeled over, making life harder below, but nobody minds because it represents speed. Everyone is now fully operational, and eating heartily, and all is well on board.

We lost some great crew members in Cape Town -- Mel Williams, Dan Wagerfield, Iordan Kolev, Nicky Murphy, and Beccy Unsworth. Nicky will rejoin us for Leg 8, but sadly none of the others will sail with us again.

On behalf of the whole crew, I'd like to say thanks to all of you for your contributions; you are all missed.

We have also gained some new faces for Leg 3 - Rex Deacon, Thom Fisher, Mike Gruning, Heledd Hanscomb, Joe Kean, Andy Ogg, Sam Ruiz, and Charlie Stalberg. There are now 21 people on board which is making watch changeovers busier than normal but we're managing to work around each other without too many collisions.

Andrew Ogg, who joined the boat in Cape Town, and is with us for Legs 3, 4, 6, and 7, is today's guest blogger. He actually wrote this yesterday, but was too late for the blog.

Until Anon

Henry

Over to you Andy:

Hi Folks

What an amazing send off we had from Cape Town. After a glorious day's refresher sail in Table Bay we were off to the start line for a race around the cans Solent style before heading out towards the Southern Ocean. The Royal Cape Yacht Club know the fickle winds of Table Bay and routed us right into the beach in the Table Mountain wind shadow which lead to some very close boat to boat before we picked up some breeze and headed out of the bay. Heading down the coast there were still some wind shadows from the land which seemed to catch out the leaders and we tried to keep offshore to sail over them with mixed success.

The wind then really kicked in and after the light winds of the start us

Leg 3 joiners had our first dose of winds up to 70knts and white out wind and spray with large heaped waves breaking around us. At daylight on Day 2 we didn't help our cause in the high winds by getting the reef 3 line tangled with the runner, which meant we couldn't reef or tack until it was sorted. Overpowered on reef 2 we were on our side frequently until Plan A followed by Plan B with the skipper on a halyard saw it sorted and with wind still gusting 45knts we flew along under 3 reefs and staysail.

We are now trying to tack our way southward with lighter winds on the nose to find the strong westerlies of the Southern Ocean below 40 degrees South.

Our crew affected by seasickness are steadily returning to their watches and we should shortly be up to full strength. Everyone is in good spirits and looking to do well on this the toughest Leg so far.

Thinking of you all.

Andrew